ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION
National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi met the lower house speaker Shwe Mann on Thursday (November 19) for talks in the capital, Naypyitaw.
Myanmar's parliament chairman on Monday (November 16) urged lawmakers from the ruling party thrashed at the polls to play fair in the outgoing legislature's remaining debates, which could determine the budget a new opposition-led government will inherit next year.
The NLD won an outright majority in the November 8 election and its leader Suu Kyi has asked reformist house speaker Shwe Mann for help in a drawn-out transition expected to be concluded in late March.
Former junta heavyweight Shwe Mann has become an unlikely ally for Suu Kyi, and the loss of his seat and signs of estrangement from the army and his ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) have left his political future uncertain.
Shwe Mann's warm ties with Suu Kyi and his attempt to block some military from running as USDP candidates contributed to his dramatic removal as party leader in August.
Some NLD members are concerned military-appointed lawmakers could coerce USDP legislators to beef-up the next armed forces budget, at the expense of areas key to NLD's hopes of making a successful debut in government amid high expectations from a public yearning for change.
The USDP dominates parliament right now, but has so far won only 41 seats in the upper and lower houses, little more than a 10th of the NLD's 390 - a resounding snub to a party created by the junta and controlled by generals who ceded power in 2011.